EA - A new framing to replace "Welfarism vs. Abolitionism" by Aidan Kankyoku

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A new framing to replace "Welfarism vs. Abolitionism", published by Aidan Kankyoku on January 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Inspired by what seems like a recent détente between different factions in animal advocacy, I just posted this two-part article to paxfauna.org and wanted to share it here as well. It has more of a narrative form but I try to present a new way of thinking about these different roles in the movement. Hope you find it useful or at least enjoyable!Part 1: "Welfarism Vs. Abolitionism" Is ObsoleteThe GistAnimal advocates have been divided over pursuing more or less radical demands, leading to a conflict often framed as welfarism vs. abolitionism.This framing obscures the fact that all strategies used by animal advocates are incremental; we merely focus on different increments.Existing evidence does not support some of activists’ most common concerns about incremental welfare campaigns.A more sophisticated view of the different roles necessary in a movement ecology can resolve these conflicts.An Innocent QuestionWhen I was in college, around 2016, my campus animal rights club hosted a talk by the local representative of The Humane League (THL). As she stood facing about two dozen college students interested in animal activism, she began her talk with a question:“What goal should animal activists pursue?”After several seconds of silence, I threw out an answer that reflected my background as an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE for short). DxE had a notorious flair for dramatic confrontations with the public, using disruptive protest to demand a complete dismantling of the legal systems abetting the exploitation of other animals for the benefit of humans. My answer, one of DxE’s slogans, was shorthand for that:“Total animal liberation.”The THL rep (I’ll call her Kristy since I haven’t asked permission to use her name) endured an awkward silence waiting to see if anyone else would respond. Kristy had been working for THL about as long as I’d been organizing with DxE. Her job was to mobilize volunteers to support THL’s signature tactics: handing out leaflets to the public about meatless diets, and pressuring corporations like Mcdonald's to set animal welfare standards for their supply chains. When she clicked to the next slide, the answer waiting there was, like mine, a reflection of her organization’s ethos:“Reduce the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number of animals we can.”Them’s Fightin’ WordsFor an outsider to the world of animal advocacy, these two answers would probably seem perfectly compatible. Yet from the moment they were spoken, room 217 of the Hellems Arts & Sciences building was filled with a palpable tension. A conflict much larger than us had asserted itself.The humans that make up both THL and DxE share the extremely uncommon view that farming animals is a grievous moral harm, and the even less common conviction to dedicate their lives to opposing it. Yet back in 2016, this didn’t seem to be worth much. The relationship between the organizations was racked with mutual distrust, even disdain. And this malaise was merely a microcosm for a larger conflict among animal advocates, one that had been playing out for years in vicious comment threads across social media. To at least one side, this was known as the battle of welfarists vs. abolitionists.In a moment, I’ll explain why I hope this dichotomy will finally be relegated to the dustbin of history. In fact, I believe it was as useless and misleading back then as it is now. But that’s not what I thought at the time.As soon as Kristy’s answer appeared on the screen, a familiar narrative was racing through my brain. I had labeled her a welfarist, and as fast as my neurons could fire, this label was joined by a series of harsh judgments. K...